In the past few years, lawmakers in Colorado and elsewhere have looked at sentencing reform and early release both as a way to save money and as a matter of justice — the feeling being that earlier efforts to mandate sentences, especially for non-violent offenders, had sometimes been too inflexible and harsh.

And we’ve supported some of those efforts.

Evan Ebel is Exhibit A, however, for why such efforts have to be carefully targeted — and why meaningful sentences for violent offenders are absolutely essential.

Senate Bill 176, the 2011 law that allowed prisoners such as Ebel to earn good time while in solitary confinement, was not, strictly speaking, sentencing reform. Its main purpose was to define “appropriate use of restrictive confinement.” But the bill did allow some prisoners to get out before they otherwise would have.

Don’t misunderstand: We’re not blaming lawmakers for Ebel’s apparent murder of Department of Corrections chief Tom Clements and pizza delivery man Nathan Leon. Clements himself supported the bill’s final version, the Post story notes. But as you read the story of Ebel’s persistently violent, malicious and disturbed behavior during the years he was locked up, you realize that he was a walking time bomb who was very likely going to hurt someone when he got out, no matter when that release occurred.

He had accumulated a total of 28 disciplinary write-ups and been cited four times for assault and three times for fighting. In his entire period in prison, which began in February 2005 and ended Jan. 28, he was so out of control — “Evil Ebel” was his nickname — that he never managed to last a single month in the general prison population.

Corrections officials were certainly under no illusions regarding his prospects on the outside. As The Post reported, “A prerelease assessment last Dec. 14 by DOC case manager Donna Sims indicated he was a ‘very high risk (recidivism odds: two in three).’ “

Why would anyone not want to keep such a man in prison for another 115 days if that had been possible?

It’s one thing for lawmakers to try to ensure that prison officials aren’t sweeping too many people into solitary confinement who don’t really belong there, just to make prison management easier. That amounts to sound oversight on lawmakers’ part.

It’s quite another thing, however, for them to accelerate the release of prisoners such as Ebel whose behavior inside has been utterly appalling.

Keeping violent prisoners locked up to the full extent allowed by their sentences truly is a matter of public safety.